I was one of the few people who weren't really interested when No Man's Sky was first revealed - the concept was interesting, but thinking about it for a few minutes more had me questioning what we were really shown and whether or not that was interesting - and this more or less seems like a confirmation of my earlier 'fears' (if we can even call them that).
The game basically seems to lack purpose. I understand that the theme of the game is essentially to go on a space adventure and see crazy things, but when you recall the size of the team, and the fact that they were trying to make it seem like the game was procedurally generating several different types of creatures and AI (which started to smell suspiciously like feature creep), it seemed a bit out of their grasp.
Now it seems like someone higher up or even within the team basically realized that that idea was too 'soft' and they have to find some way to justify throwing in mechanics so that there's an actual game in there, as opposed to just going from planet to planet, seeing cool things and not doing much with them.
Hope it does turn out well, since the team received so much of a positive response when they revealed their project. Maybe further reveals and/or impressions from Gaffers will change my opinion.